


Ain't No Fishy In The Water

by Tolpen



Series: Downey Centric Headcanon Pile [5]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Poisons, School, Students being students, Wold OCs Appear, assassins being assassins, poor piranha, the fish was already dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 01:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12519804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: Instead of being a proper substitute teacher like he is supposed to be, Lord Downey tells his students how young Vetinari and he were back in their students years fed up with their Applied Alchemy professor's bullshit.





	Ain't No Fishy In The Water

Downey was three coffees late behind his schedule. Or maybe too sober. Whatever it was, he didn'T deserve to substitute in goddamned two in the afternoon. He looked around the class. The studentts didn't want to be there a bit more than he did. He sighed and dramatically fell into the teacher's chair.

A deep sigh and then: 'Alright. What were you supposed to have?'

The students exchanged looks and in the end it was Aconite, particularly because she was good in Algebra and therefore less afraid of him, who said: 'Social Communication, Doctor.' Downey had always told his students they might try to call him Lord Downey but he is going to throw knives at them for it. No one dared to try it.

Lord Downey rolled his eyes all the way to the back of his head and to the front again, and muttered something anatomically explicit about the Teachers' Guild decrees. It got him a sincere laughter of agreement from the class.

'Fine. I was never the one to say I'm any master of social _anything_. In fact, I advise you to not take my communication tactics as an example unless you can handle a lot of angry people at your doors.' Another burst of laughter from the younglings.

'Have you ever had a conflicting communication situation about poisons?' asked Twinklemon from behind his barricade of textbooks.

'Of course. Plenty.'

Aconite caught the thread and pulled it by persuading: 'One where no one died?'

Downey smiled. 'A few, yes.'

And then something completely unexpected happened. Constantin, squeezed between a desk and a chair in the furthest corner, the quietest kid in the class who'd sell a soul (not his soul, mind you, but someone's soul for sure) if he could stop drawing any attention, spoke: 'Any of them you would share with us?' He soughed and continued: 'We are supposed to share communication situations in this class. It would actually be... in place.' This was, aside from oral exams, the longest verbal response Downey had _ever_ heard from Constantin.

'Well, since it's you, mister Constantin, I actually have one you will probably enjoy.' Now even Stilltoe looked up from her manicure.

Downe's grin had a lot in common with plague – spreading slowly, easily noticeable, and turning face into something deeply unsettling. 'It was many years ago, in fact I was in the last year on the Academy and I was in Mericet's Applied Alchemy class. That's old name for Poisons. What are you staring at? Yes, Mericet had been teaching even back then. Anyway, we were revising, so Mericet brought in a box of poisons and was having funny remarks about them.' His fingers drew quotation marks around the word _funny_. It was understood, Professor Mericet hadn't changed much with age and a lot of people had him for Poisons.

'So, as I was saying, Mericet was bloody annoying and we were bloody annoyed. Me specially, since I knew he wasn't letting me to attend to the final Applied Alchemy exam, so I wasn't going to get the degree from it anyway, and therefore it was a complete waste of my time. And then he opened a bottle of mercury and let us take a look at it. He said, and here I quote: 'You see, lads,' ' Downey's voice changed and few of the students actually looked around, searching for unexpected Mericet in the classroom. Downey was very proud of his vocal range and what he could do with it.

' 'This is just like water,' ' Downey continued in Mericet's voice. ' 'Only it's silver and deadly. And if you are stupid and not sure, you just need to look closely.' And with that he attempted to press Shovelin's face in the bottle. It was the large bottle we still have in the poison collections. But we no longer use it. Anyway, Shovelin had his nose full of mercury and Mericet was a giggling brat and snickered at us: 'There ain't no fishy in the water, lads. Even an idiot like you are has to see that.'

Twinklemon nodded: 'Ol' Mericet hadn't changed in years, had he?'

'No, he hadn't,' Downey confirmed. 'Not much anyway. Bit I tell you, we were really pissed. Now, I don't know, have I told you that I was in the same year as our Patrician? I'm sure I had told you that at some point. Or most of you at least. Well, if no one else, Constantin surely knows it. Anyway, Vetinari and I left the class that day considering a revenge. I had a personal war going on with Mericet,' he didn't say he still had it in a way going on, 'and Vetinari... was Vetinari.' That was followed by few giggles from the class.

'We used to get along even worse then we do now, but that time we had actually agreed to work together. So we went to a market together and bought a fish.' The students chuckled. 'I say fish, but it was, in fact, a piranha.' Now nobody even bothered to hide the fact they were chuckling, some of them even giggling and grinning.

'So, and with the fish we broke into the poison collections. We tried to put that damn thing in the mercury, but of course it floated on the top. That was when I had the great idea to stuff the piranha with lead -' he had to pause, because it seemed some of the students were about to suffocate.

'It's quite a feat to put lead marbles in a fish, let me tell you, and it was still just slightly below the surface of the mercury, but we were afraid of the staff catching us, se we sneaked out and that was it. As far as I know, Mericet was showing the bottle to a different class the next day, and when he opened it, the damned piranha peeked out of the bottle. I hadn't seen it, but the Tarantula class had a lot of fun. However, Mericet hadn't touched mercury ever since.'

 

**Author's Note:**

> I shit you not, Social Communication is a regular class at my school and it's mandatory. It is in the morning and I'd sell my right eye if I didn't have to attend to it.


End file.
